Florida group fights for shade against stifling heat conditions
Working in the heat outdoors can make even the simplest jobs difficult. Multiply that when the job is already laborious. While OSHA offers advice and technically mandates protections for workers in high temperature environments, many say these aren't enforced. Which has led organizations like Florida's Fair Food Program to address the issue.
Beginning last summer, following weeks of research, data collection, and discussion, the Fair Food Program stepped into this breach and established important new heat safety standards for farmworkers under the FFP’s protections. These are, as of February 2024, finally beginning to take effect.
Antonia Rios Hernandez provided her testimonial to the Fair Food Program as part of the effort to combat overheating for outdoor workers in high temperature conditions.
In consultation with the Fair Food Standards Council (the third-party monitor that enforces the Fair Food Program Code of Conduct on Participating Farms), and with Participating Growers on the FFP’s Working Group (a collaborative body at the heart of the FFP that provides essential feedback on emerging issues necessary to develop practical regulations designed to remedy those issues), the CIW set forth enforceable standards requiring mandatory breaks; comprehensive, trilingual training; and emergency response protocols, effective immediately, on all Fair Food Program farms.
On top of the FFP Code of Conduct’s existing provisions guaranteeing workers access to shade, water, and elective rest breaks, the FFP’s new “Heat Stress Illness Awareness, Prevention, and Response Plan” adds several key new protections, including:
From May 1 – October 31
Mandatory Cool-Down Rest Breaks: All crews engaged in harvesting must take rest breaks of no less than 10 minutes every 2 hours (due to the logistical challenges of managing large crews in expansive fields, breaks can be taken slightly before the two-hour mark or slightly after, but no longer than 2.5 hours from the last break)
Increased Monitoring: Crewleaders and HR staff will review with crews the plan’s heat stress prevention measures, actively scan employees for symptoms of heat stress, and identify and closely monitor new employees during their first three weeks on the job as they acclimate to the heat.
Effective year-round
Education and Training (trilingual): Employees and supervisors will be trained on the requirements of the plan, on the signs and symptoms of heat illness, and on the responses to symptoms of heat illness, as required by the plan.
Responding to Heat Stress Symptoms: Any employee who reports or is identified by a supervisor as showing signs or symptoms of heat illness will be immediately relieved from duty to hydrate and rest in shade, as well as have the right to receive medical care if requested (including being taken to a clinic or emergency room), with the particular response always to be in keeping with the OSHA standards for appropriate first aid to be given for particular symptoms.
This is, of course, not the first time the FFP has responded quickly and concretely to unforeseen, emerging threats to workers’ health and safety. The COVID-19 pandemic represented another such threat that — unimaginable just a decade ago when the Fair Food Program’s original Code of Conduct was drafted — required the quick and effective promulgation of new standards to prevent the spread of the deadly virus on FFP participating farms.